3-021-135 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Explosion in the Place de la Sorbonne, Paris, 1869. Engraving of the scene after the explosion '...from a sketch by M. A. Rovargue, who was an eye-witness of the event, happening to pass through the street at the very moment when it occurred...at the chemical manufactory of M. Veron-Fontaine, the inventor of a new kind of fulminating powder for submarine torpedoes. A vessel full of picrate of potassium...blew up and destroyed all the lower part of the house...the people in the upper rooms, in order to escape from the conflagration which followed, had to get out of the windows by ladders. M. Veron-Fontaine and his son, with two other persons, were instantly killed. Two of the bodies were hurled against a bench on the opposite side of the street, and were broken into pieces by the violence of the shock, some of the bleeding limbs striking the fronts of the shops or being dashed through the windows. The head of one of the victims was cast into the Rue Victor Cousin, opposite the manufactory...The explosive power of the liquid is such that any ship to which it was applied would be instantly blown to pieces. The quantity of picrate of potassium was sufficient, had the accident occurred in the cellars, to have blown up the entire row of houses'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.